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This is the hummus I make at home. Its the best recipe I have found so far and is fantastic. It’s From Alice’s Kitchen, A book I picked up at Arabfest last year Its a signed copy and the recipes look great. Unfortunatly this is the only one I’ve used so far. I’m going to cover the blender/canned bean version as thats what i use

Hummus bi Tahini

2 cans garbanzo beans, drained (save a little juice)
4 tablespoons tahini, or 4 tablespoons natural peanut butter, and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds.
3 cloves garlic (we use more like 5 )
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 tbls olive oil.

Place lemon juice salt and garlic  and sesame seeds in blender, blend. then blend in the garbanzos a one cup at a time with a little juice from the can, then place in a bowl. Stir in tahini or peanut butter, water and olive oil. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top for decoration.

Sunday morning i got up and made Lemon Curd, even before I’d had breakfast.
The Lemon curd recipe came from the recent issue of Cooking Light, and was fairly simple. One cup lemon juice, 1 cup plus 2 tbls sugar,  a pinch of salt, 1 tbls of cornstarch.  3eggs, mix together and cook until it boils add 2 tbls of butter.

Chill it in the fridge for a few hours and mmm tasty.  I’m thinking April might be my chance to cook every recipe from Cooking Light’s March issue.  I’m in the proccess of taking the recipes and importing them into Big Oven,  so that I can scale them down. Its surprising how many of the recipes feed a party load of people. 

Overall it was a productive weekend for me. I made 2 loaves of bread, pulled pork, Soda bread, and Hummus.  The hummus was my classic recipe  and was designed to use up the leftover lemons from the lemon curd.   Sadly we don’t have pita to eat it with, so it will just go on sandwiches or with random veggies.

The only real disappointment of the weekend was my soda bread. Usually I use a recipe from about.com
This time instead I grabbed one of the cookbooks off my shelf and tried it instead. The bread never really formed, was way too dry and then never rose or really "breaded" it was crusty and ragedy on the outside edges. The inside was tasty, but all in all I was disappointed.

Next weekend will be yogurt again and maybe more kefir (which still scares me)

Chicken Paprika

3 lbs of chicken, cut and browned. Remove from pan
Add 3 cups of sliced onions and 1/2 lb of mushrooms sauteed in the pan. Sprinkle over 2 tbls of flour, 1/4 cup of paprika. Cook 1 minute
then add
1 Clove garlic chopped 1 bay leaf, 1.5 cups water, some chicken base (or use chicken broth.) Simmer till thick, add chicken back in. Cook until chicken is cooked through.
then add
1.5 cups lowfat sour cream. stir in, Serve over whole wheat noodles.   

A simpledish, its a delicious. This is really what cooking out of the Joy of cooking is about , a classic recipe that is easy to make. While I wouldnt try it on a weekday, it was fairly quick to make. I hadnt even intended to make it tonight, I’d actually intended to  make the version from this months issue of Cooking Light, However the Cooking light version was a crockpot version and I didnt get it started this morning as I intended. So , the Joy of Cooking for the back up plan.

I’ll be making the Cooking Light version to see how it compares.

I started the Kefir this weekend at the same time I made yogurt. It only takes 24 hours to culture, and then I gave it an extra 36 hours to chill in the fridge.

My first taste today, and its welll, interesting. It has this flavor of drinking bread dough. Not the texture thankfull, but the flavor. I’ve emailed my Kefir making list to see if this is right, as I’m just not sure what to expect. If this is how it is supposed to be, it will take a little getting used to and a bit of doctoring.

Between the Kefir and the daily yogurt/banana/homemade granola breakfast, my calcium intake must be at a record high. I’ll have to keep an eye on those calories.

After 6 hours in incubation in the cooler the yogurt gelled and I moved the glass jars into the fridge. I let them chill and sampled a few times. It was a creamy softness, definatly yogurt in texture, if a little soft. The flavor was sweet though, more like fresh milk then yogurt. Next time I’ll let it incubate a bit longer to cultivate a more sour taste.

In the meantime, its been breakfast for me. Slice a banana , 2 handfuls of homemade granola (low fat low in excess sugar.)  mix together, and pour yogurt over the top. Let sit on the way to work and eat when I get to work. Tasty. 

I’m going to hit Costco for Milk this weekend and give it another try. Perhaps  with a different starter and definatly with a longer incubation period.

Once I get yogurt mastered, I’m moving onto cheeses.